The present invention relates generally to pager transceivers and methods for selective paging and, more particularly, to paging transceivers and methods for selectively acting on information at desired times.
In general, a paging receiver can be classified into one of four categories: an alert or tone only paging receiver, a numeric paging receiver, an alphanumeric paging receiver, or a voice paging receiver. One common characteristic of all of these paging receivers is that they monitor the air waves and notify the user when their particular address has been detected. For the alert or tone only paging receiver, the paging receiver would generate a tone or beep when its address is detected. The other paging receivers, upon detecting their address, would additionally store a message associated with the address signal and display or play it to the user. The message for a numeric paging receiver would be a set of numbers, typically the calling person""s telephone number, and the message for an alphanumeric paging receiver would be a set of numbers and/or letters. The user of an alphanumeric paging receiver could therefore receive a message in the form of a telephone number with some descriptive text. For the voice paging receiver, the message that is stored is a voice message that the user can later play to hear the message.
A paging receiver is typically a rather small electronic device and, accordingly, has a limited amount of memory for storing messages that have been received from a base station in a paging system. Because of the relatively small size of the memory, the paging receiver can store only a limited number of messages. A user can delete messages from memory but will oftentimes desire to save a message, such as temporarily until the user makes a note of the message or until he or she is able to respond to the page. The messages that are saved in memory, however, reduce the space in memory that is available to receive new messages. This demand on space in memory is increasing as the size of the messages continue to grow and as users receive a greater number of messages. Although more memory can be added to accommodate more messages, the added cost and space needed for extra memory runs counter to the desires to keep the paging receiver small and inexpensive. A need therefore exists for a paging receiver which can display and/or play messages while efficiently using memory.
In addition to the demand on paging receiver memory, paging systems will be challenged as greater numbers of pages are being transmitted and as the size of the transmitted messages increases. Initially, when paging systems were only concerned with transmitting address signals of the paging receivers, the size of each transmission by the paging systems was relatively small. Paging receivers and paging systems, however, have undergone tremendous advances with paging systems now transmitting messages which can be hundreds of kilobytes or greater in size in addition to the address signals. Additionally, many paging receivers are actually paging transceivers which transmit acknowledgment signals back through the paging system. The capacity of the paging systems are therefore being challenged not only by messages of increasing sizes but also by reply signals transmitted from the paging transceivers to the paging system. The future of paging systems is therefore tied to the ability of the paging systems to control the number and size of the data transmissions and to provide additional features without sacrificing the quality of service to the user.
As discussed above, many paging transceivers are able to issue a reply or acknowledgment back to the base station in response to a received message. If the base station does not receive this reply or acknowledgment, then the base station assumes that the message has not been received and will repeatedly transmit the message until the reply or acknowledgment is received. Due to the high power levels at which the base station transmits its paging signals, the signals are usually easily received by all paging transceivers located within the coverage area of the base station antenna. The paging transceivers, on the other hand, must operate at lower power levels and often cannot transmit signals at sufficiently high levels to reach the base station. For example, when a paging transceiver is located in a basement of a building, in a subway, or in an airplane, the paging transceiver may be unable to issue a reply that can reach the base station As a result, the base station may continue to transmit a page to a paging transceiver and the paging transceiver will continue to receive the message but the base station cannot detect the reply being issued by the paging transceiver. This unnecessary transmission of duplicate messages and the ineffectual reply signals transmitted by the paging transceivers consume valuable resources of the paging system and of the paging transceiver.
For safety reasons, a user may at times have to turn off his or her paging transceiver. For instance, when the user is on an airplane, the transmissions from the paging transceiver can interfere with the instrumentation or communication within the cockpit of the plane. The paging transceiver therefore should not be operating within the plane or around other electronic equipment that are sensitive to interference from the signals transmitted by the paging transceiver. As another example, if the user is in an environment that contains electronic detonators for explosive materials, the signals transmitted by the paging transceiver could possibly trigger an explosion. The user therefore must turn his or her paging transceiver off to ensure that it does not transmit any reply or acknowledgment signals in response to a received page. Although it may be dangerous for the paging transceiver to issue a reply signal in these situations, the signals transmitted by the base station may at times be safely received by the paging transceiver. Since the paging transceiver automatically issues a reply in response to a received message, the paging transceiver must nonetheless be turned off so as to not pose a risk to the user. During these times that the paging transceiver must be turned off, the user unfortunately is unable to receive any page or message. A need therefore exists for a paging transceiver that can notify a user of a message without automatically generating a reply message or acknowledgment to the base station.
The present invention solves the problems described above with methods and systems for selective paging. A paging system notifies a paging transceiver that a message has been received but does not initially transmit the associated message. The user, upon being notified of the message, can then download the entire message at a time convenient to the user, which allows the user to download messages at less expensive off-peak hours and allows the user to place the paging transceiver at a location where it can easily receive the message and reply to the message. Since the messages are not initially transmitted to the paging transceiver, the paging transceiver can receive and store a greater number of pages with minimal increase in the size of memory. Further, because entire messages are not automatically transmitted and since the user can position the paging transceiver to issue a sufficiently strong reply, traffic in the paging system can be controlled and actually reduced.
The system may transmit some identifying information about the page to the user without sending the entire message. For instance, the base station may identify the type of message, such as email, voice, or text, and also indicate the caller or other descriptive material about the message. The user can then determine the priority of the message and whether he or she wants to retrieve the message, play the message, erase the message store the message, forward, reply, or otherwise act on the message. The user is also given control over the messages stored remotely from the paging transceiver and can erase or store these messages from the paging transceiver.
The paging transceiver may have a timer for allowing the user to program the paging transceiver to perform a desired function on a message at a particular time. The timer is preferably a user controlled option and may, for instance, operate to trigger action at a particular time. The time may advantageously be set by the user or system storing information to coincide with off-peak hours when traffic is lower so as to reduce costs to the user. Alternatively, the timer may be programmed by the user to expire after a certain time delay or at any other particular time. Thus, for example, a user may set up a pager transceiver so that it receives stock information consistently at 4 p.m. The times set by the timer, moreover, may vary with the source of information. As a result, information obtained from one source may consistently be delivered at a first time while information obtained from a second source may be delivered at a second time.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide pager transceivers and methods for paging that conserve memory in pager transceivers.
It is another object of the present invention to provide pager transceivers and methods for paging that conserve valuable air time.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide pager transceivers and methods for paging that provide users with remote control over their messages.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide pager transceivers and methods for paging that allow users to select when and how action should be taken on their messages.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide pager transceivers and methods for notifying users of received messages.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide pager transceivers and methods for providing control to users over messages stored at remote locations.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide pager transceivers and methods that enable users to set times at which action should be taken on their information.